Etymology
The etymology of the name Dylan is somewhat complex. In Welsh, there is a bound item dylanw- which appears in dylanwad ‘influence,’ dylanwadol ‘influential’ and dylanwadu ‘to influence’. This element dylanw- appears itself to be a compound of the prefix dy- and the noun llanw ‘tidal flow’. The prefix dy- appears in numerous words in Welsh and is reconstructed in Proto-Celtic as *dī- with the meaning of ‘off, away’. The item llanw is reconstructed in Proto-Celtic as *φlanwo- ‘flood, filling.’ This *φlanwo- may plausibly have had a reduced form *φlanu- ‘flood.’ This etymology is echoed in the following Gaelic (Irish) words:
- nf. in : gob na tuinne, the water edge
- nf. g. tòine; d. tòin; pl.+an, the fundament
- nm. g.v. tuinn; pl.+an and tuinn, wave, surge, billow
Alone, the Welsh element dy can mean ‘thy, thine’ or rather ‘your’ (singular) but there is no gloss of this word meaning ‘great,’ as the most cursory glance at the Welsh dictionary proves. The name Dylan, then, can be maintained to be the descendant of a compound of Proto-Celtic elements *dī- φlanu-s which together basically mean something in context relative to one of the following:
‘The flood that recedes’
'The wave that floods'
'The tide that returns'
Read more about this topic: Dylan Ail Don
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